Jerusalem Bombing: Obama Must Act Now

Today's bus bombing in
Jerusalem produced the usual reactions, and there is no need for me to repeat
them here. They are utterly
predictable.

The right points to this
latest act of Palestinian violence with no reference to Israeli violence. The
left speaks of the "cycle of violence" which must be broken, putting blame on
both sides.

Not surprisingly, I am in the
second camp. Out of respect for the victims of today's attack, I won't
enumerate the Palestinians who were killed by the Israelis over the past few
days. What's the point? Anyone who does not know what has been going on in Gaza
is either uninterested or doesn't care.

One thing is clear. Making
reference to acts of violence by one side without reference to those inflicted
by the other only perpetuates one side's feelings of victimhood, reinforcing the
sense of grief and grievance that leads to more violence.

One can only hope that this
latest atrocity captures the Obama administration's attention (acts of violence
against Palestinians certainly don't) and that the administration will finally
get serious about ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which it could do if
it had the will.

President Obama came to
office determined to end it. On his first day, he telephoned the prime minister
of Israel and the president of the Palestinian Authority and pledged his best
efforts to resolve the conflict. He said that he hoped to achieve a
breakthrough during his first year in office.

But then he flinched after Binyamin
Netanyahu refused to implement a settlement freeze, an obvious precondition for
negotiations. (Palestinians, quite reasonably, won't negotiate over land while
it is in the process of being gobbled up.)

When Obama flinched, Netanyahu
decided that he could be rolled, and began to ignore any and all requests by
the president to help him tamp down the conflict. Obama, in turn, stopped
trying.

Obama's decision to walk away
pleased his political advisers, who fear that any pressure on Israel will
result in diminished campaign donations for the 2012 re-election campaign. On
top of that, Obama's chief adviser on Middle East issues is Dennis Ross, who is
as close to AIPAC as anyone can be without being on its staff. Ross views his
role as preventing Obama from offending the Israeli government and its backers
here. To put it mildly, he is not an audacious peacemaker.

Until today's bombing, it
appeared that the status quo would hold until after the 2012 election at the
earliest.

And it is some status quo! The
West Bank remains occupied. Gaza is under full Israeli blockade with its people
living in third world-like conditions. Israeli settlers keep grabbing up more
and more of the West Bank, with Palestinians — especially in East Jerusalem —
being driven from their homes to make way for them. Armed militants in Gaza
keep firing their rockets into Israel. (It's miraculous that no school or
hospital has been hit.) And the IDF keeps striking back, killing primarily
innocent bystanders.

At this rate, a new war will
break out soon, which is the last thing anyone needs. Forget the Palestinians
and Israelis for a minute. The last thing President Obama needs right now is
another Middle Eastern war when he already has to deal with Iraq, Afghanistan,
and now Libya. (That is especially true if the United States, as it usually
does, unconditionally backs Israel. More than anything else, it is our
one-sided backing of Netanyahu and his predecessors that has virtually
destroyed U.S. standing in the Muslim world.)

The good news is that the president's
deft handling of the Libya situation demonstrates that this administration is
more than capable of handling a foreign policy crisis, at least when it does
not permit politics to intervene. If Obama just ignores the lobby and begins
behaving like the honest broker he promised to be, he can prevent this
situation from spiraling out of control.

Here is what he needs to do. He
needs to present an American plan to Israelis and Palestinians, a detailed
framework for a final status solution, and demand its implementation. (Conditioning
U.S. aid on acceptance of the U.S. plan should do the trick.)

There is no need to spell out
the details in full. Israelis, Palestinians, and Americans all know what they
are.

In exchange for the
establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza, and East
Jerusalem, Israel would be presented with ironclad security guarantees and full
normalization of relations with the entire Arab world (as was offered in the
Arab League Initiative). Although both the issues of Palestinian refugees and
sovereignty over religious sites in Jerusalem remain problematic, former
President Clinton, among others, has offered formulas that would be acceptable
to both sides. (The only reason Clinton's plan failed to be accepted at Camp
David in 2000 was that neither Palestinian President Arafat nor Israeli Prime
Minister Barak had the guts to just say yes.)

And that's it. It is the old
land-for-peace formula that was essentially agreed to by Arafat and Yitzhak
Rabin in 1993.

Obama could make it happen
now, in large part because Israel's position is so much weaker today than in
the 1990s. Although Egypt still observes the terms of its treaty with Israel, that could change at any time. The Jordanian regime is shaky. Hezbollah now controls
Lebanon. Syria grows ever closer to Iran. And Turkey, once Israel's staunch
ally, is so disgusted by Israel's Gaza policy that it is a distant friend, at
best. Even the Europeans are turning, with not even France, Germany, or the
United Kingdom joining the United States in opposing a Security Council
Resolution on West Bank settlements.

Israel's best chance of
surviving these dramatic changes is by resolving the conflict with the
Palestinians. In fact, it is Israel's only chance.

The Palestinians need an
agreement with Israel every bit as much as Israel does. Palestinian youth in
both Gaza and the West Bank are not immune to the revolutionary stirrings other
Arabs are feeling. In fact, as the only stateless Arabs, they feel more
strongly about their predicament than their brethren. Without a state, soon,
they too will rise up against the regimes that offer nothing but hopelessness.

The bottom line is that the
status quo cannot hold. We are on the brink of an explosion, one that will
jeopardize the lives of Israelis and Palestinians and America's interests in
the Middle East, starting with our military personnel.

President Obama is the one
person who can turn this situation around. History will not forgive him if, in
the name of political expediency, he looks away.